During the July #aiachat, architects sang the praises of sustainable design and green building. Kyle Lee @KyleLEED says, “Green design is not only ‘good’ but a necessity.” @tomorrowsproject says, “67% of our poll respondents say sustainable design is already synonymous with good design.”

Others cite difficulties with increased costs of construction and persuading reluctant clients. In other words, according to this group, ‘why’ we build sustainably has been answered. Consensus reached, amen to that. And then we continue to stumble on the ‘how,’ the pragmatics of execution. Increased initial costs and unwilling clients have long been the one-two knockout punches for sustainable design.

In fact, beyond the community of sustainable design experts, you can hardly miss the frequent challenges. Particularly fierce shots target US Green Building Council’s LEED certification system, the reigning model for green design.

What are the problems with sustainable design?
Here’s a brief recap of the major complaints.

Credibility. The ever-present bugaboo, greenwashing, undermines the credibility of the entire green tech industry. As The Atlantic said, being green is just too easy.

Conflicting Standards. The myriad of green codes, regulations, and standards such as LEED, state or city energy codes, and BREEAM confuses clients and experts. Sometimes the criteria conflict. Which should we follow?

Low Standards. LEED isn’t strict enough. For instance, according to recent report by Environment and Human Health, Inc., the highest level of LEED (platinum) does not mandate clean air quality and allows toxic materials. Does LEED actually protect human health?

Lacks Vision. LEED doesn’t inspire designers. It fails to represent true sustainability in a holistic sense including social justice, beauty, spirituality, quality of life, and education. It’s simply a checklist, not a transformational concept.

User Complaints. Most recently, people that live in LEED buildings have started their own anti-sustainability campaign.

Gives even the most devoted believer pause, doesn’t it? What happened to the magic? Where’s the spirit of enthusiasm that inspired a movement? Are we truly building sustainably? Is LEED completely inadequate? Is there a fundamental lack of public support?

From this list of attacks, I see a pattern of three significant types of problems.

Is LEED the best option for sustainable design? Several of the items (performance, user complaints, and conflicting standards) confront LEED. Does it need tweaks or a major overhaul? Or should we throw it out and move on to a better system?

Why is there a war between sustainability and design excellence? Can green building and good design co-exist? Gehry gave it air, but believe you me, he’s got a whole cadre of cheerers. Lines are drawn.

In terms of sustainable buildings and cities, where do we go from here? Is there support for sustainable design in the long run? And frankly, exactly what is sustainable design? (You might think I’d start here, but I’d rather jump into the middle instead, grapple with some particulars, build some context, and see how those situations influence the abstract idea of sustainable design.)

Sustainable design is after all the single most critical problem that the modern building community has ever faced. Rather than the promised upward trend of endless new technologies and progressive growth, we have discovered epic mistakes, some that are irreversible. Our buildings make people, ecologies, even the planet sick. We abuse energy, waste resources, and destroy natural systems.

So where do we start? How do we learn a new way of thinking? Watching the tsunami of environmental catastrophes aggregate, brilliant people have pondered the problem for decades. We have practiced many new ways over the past ten or fifteen years.

More than that, environmental damage represents the first massive step backward that the industrialized construction industry has ever faced. We don’t even have the patterns required for identifying, analyzing, and solving problems at this scale. It’s nothing short of a new way of living; a new way of being.

If in fact, we shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us, are we sick too?

A True Green Series
I have my ideas. And I bet you do too. I plan to tackle this list, and perhaps a few other stray topics, over a series of posts.

I hope you’ll read, and more than that, I hope you’ll join the conversation – here or on twitter where you’ll find me as @urbanverse.

Because I sure don’t have all the answers, or know everything. I know what I know from my experiences and study. And thanks to the joy of internet and research methods, I can gather a lot of data.

I believe it’s important to open the conversation. Complaints deserve fair analysis. And I believe the more we challenge our practices, values, and solutions, the better our work.

Are we true green? Are you creating truly sustainable environments? Are we giving future generations a reasonable chance?

Great post!In a way, Cindy, what I jokingly like to call the “militant faction of LEED” – the Living Building Challenge created by the Cascadia Green Building Council – is addressing many of the problems you mention. http://ilbi.org/While certainly not perfect (and, let’s be honest, no system will ever be perfect just as there is no fool-proof method to designing the perfect building), the standard speaks to performance by requiring 1 year of actual data before certification. It also has sections devoted entirely to health, beauty and social aspects of building. From a sustainable design standpoint, the standard goes above and beyond anything that LEED has to date.I think the Living Building Challenge standard is a great jumping off point and challenges/inspires designers to rethink the way they design, resulting in a (hopefully) holistic, sustainable & beautiful structure.

Cindy, you bring up some valid points and concerns many of us have about “Green.” It seems the only ones making money on this whole movement are those that are holding training classes for the rest of us trying to gain credentials, so we can sell ourselves to potential employers or clients.

Hello Brian: Thanks so much for bringing up the Living Building Challenge. Jason McLennan is a good friend. I will definitely talk about it later in this series (discussed it in earlier post on 21st Century Cities too http://bit.ly/47hhNH btw). best,Cindy

Thanks Caitlin for the link – good to see architects discussing the long term challenge of building performance and the influence of users. We have a lot more work to do with both people who use or live in green buildings and general knowledge about sustainability – really its a different attitude. We are not just trying to be more energy efficient, yes? it’s reducing consumption. Every person is a contributor, we all matter. Cindy

Hi Neal – you’re so right, USGBC operates in a marketplace, LEED is not legislated, we can build sustainably without them. So they have to be reasonable, not priced out of the market. Do you think that sustainable design eventually be part of our basic professional degree programs? Cindy

HI Cindy,We believe, that for our small new company, we have entered into truly sustainable built environments. It does not include LEED. It took a decade to arrive here. It meant rejecting 99% of the experts (engineers and architects and regulators) that we communicated with. Add to that extreme temperature swings of plus to minus 40C and the challenges were almost scary.

Hi Max: where are you located? You sure can achieve sustainability w/out LEED, people did it for thousands of years! and most people still do in developing countries. Plus a few in US, like the Amish. actually, only in recent history are we terribly unsustainable. The trick is, as you know, to use power and HVAC, and be sustainable. and then the location itself may have a high eco footprint. The goal is not LEED, it’s restorative buildings, then cities, then eventually, a balanced restorative planet..I would love to hear more about your experiences. New company but took a decade to figure it out – you must have been working on it before you started your company? And what are you doing contrary to what you were told and by what type of experts? thanks for reading and for your comments, hope you’ll say more and comment on future posts too. best, Cindy @urbanverse

We’ve been in a LEED® Certified office building for five years. It is also an historic landmark (brewery!). I have appreciated it. And the program encouraged the developers to do very cool things like reusing the stainless steel brewing tanks for SWM. From reading some of the anti-sustainability comments, I guess people think that because it is LEED, it is perfect. Reality and craftsmanship are still issues.

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